Do you want to track how many website visitors you have? Do you want to know where they come from and what they do on your site? Do you know what website traffic analysis tools are available to help you find out? Recent figures show that Google Analytics, the service which generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales, is used by 50.3% of all websites. It has the biggest market share, 81.9%, of all web analytics software. While Google Analytics has a comprehensive feature set, there is a wide selection of other web analytics software available which can give you an even greater insight into what your visitors are doing on your website.
These web analytics tools allow you to see where your visitors are clicking, what the focus of their attention is and even play back entire visitor journeys on your site. Areas of a web page most frequently scanned by visitors are typically displayed by these tools as heat maps, i.e. colour overlays. These heat maps are generated by tracking the mouseclicks of the visitor.
Illustration of heat map report, scroll map report & confetti report (from Crazy Egg)
An important aside: Mouse eye tracking is sometimes promoted as a cheaper alternative to real eye tracking. However, eye tracking studies indicate that there is no useful correlation between eye movements and mouse movements. Furthermore, Google research data has found no basic correlation for over 80% of users. Therefore, mouse tracking is useful in itself but not as a substitute for eye tracking. The following is a selection of what's on offer to help you take the process of visitor tracking to a whole new level:
Crazy Egg is one of the pioneers in this field. It promises to help you 'visualize your Google Analytics data' and offers a free 30 day trial. Features include a heat map report, scroll map report, confetti report (which allows you to filter mouse clicks by the source of the traffic), overlay report and list report. One drawback is its lack of user video playback. It is used by over 50,000 small business and entrepreneurs worldwide.
ClickTale offers real-time heatmap analytics (including scroll length heat maps that show you how far users are scrolling down your pages), session playback (showing how users interact with your site) & conversion funnels (illustrating your conversion paths). It is currently used by more than 100,000 businesses.
Mouseflow enables you to 'see the people behind the numbers' and offers a free plan. Its feature list includes live mouse tracking, click & move heatmaps (to enable you spot trends and boost conversions), scroll heatmaps, link analytics (to improve the navigation of your site) and in-page analytics. Usage of Mouseflow grew by 50% in the last year and it now has over 40,000 customers.
Lucky Orange has a very broad feature set and offers a free seven day trial. Its tools include heat maps, visitor recordings & live sessions, form analytics, real time analytics and a live visitor map (a real time visitor map of all your website visitors). It also offers extra interactive features such as visitor polls and live chat software. It is used on over 20,000 websites worldwide.
How is all of this extra analytics information useful? It will enable you to pinpoint where your web pages are falling down. For example, if a heatmap shows that your advertisement is being overlooked, this could be due to a poor colour choice or its position next to large images which capture more attention. Give the advertisement a more prominent place and see if your visitors respond.
By tweaking under-performing areas of your site you can improve user experience, increase conversion rates and drive more sales. Try using web analytics software similar to those listed above, in conjunction with Google Analytics, to give you the best of both worlds and help you gain a more accurate and better understanding of user behaviour on your website. For further advice on web analytics contact us today.
